Laura Tyson, a former chair of the US President's Council of Economic Advisers, is a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, a senior adviser at the Rock Creek Group, and a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Gender Parity.

Comments

I wonder how can we be a little more consistent on this "The United States has just completed its third year of economic recovery, but the unemployment rate remains above 8%........". How can USA's economy or any other industrialized economy could be recovering with such high unemployment ?. We all know that numbers like those can be found in far less developed economies, particularly commodity producers countries where high rates of economic growth can in the long term survive with high unemployment rates. Read more

In a movie version about the Manhattan Project, FDR uncertain what course to take asked to speak with Eleanor for a moment. He asked, "If Hitler had a bomb powerful enough to destroy all of London, what would he do." Without a moment's hesitation came the answer, "He'd use it."

This may well have been mere dramatization -- but most certainly the sentiment was real. And in the present political climate, with the heat rising from Radical Islam per the Muslim Brotherhood, the situation is more real.

[Per Egypt, one might ask -- would they kill an entire nation of many million if angry at a few independent citizens? Think what attacking an embassy and burning a flag represent, and the recent intelligence services warnings about attacks (presumably random) that might happen in the U.S.]

If we are lucky, Iran would only use the treat of nuclear weapons to shield it from the US and the rest of the world to take aggressive actions with its army. But like with Egypt, it may not take much to light the fuse of a very big fire cracker. This is not a fourth of July that America would want to see.

I was till recently, unemployed myself for 2 1/2 years. With all due respect to all the fraction of struggling former middle class bread winners that Mr. Obama has put back to part time minimum wage work at McDonald's, I was hoping that his foreign policy might have been better than his economic saavy. But its not being so is more frightening, because in a world with a nuclear Iran, things in all ways -- including economically -- could be so much worse.

We need a world in which we all take mutual responsibility for each other -- it is our only chance out of the present morass of Humanity. But in the world of a nuclear Iran and growing Middle Eastern radicalism that Mr. Obama is leading us to, we'll have lost it. Read more

Please, with all due respect, forget all this. The main question that should be addressed is the difference between each candidate's stand on Israel. Why? Because, with Iran's movement towards nuclear weapons capability and its determination to eradicate Israel, with the Syrian uprising, the rise of Islamic extremists in Turkey and Egypt, and with terrorists groups stockpiling more missiles, tensions in the Middle East are escalating to break point.

And, if break point is reached, we could easily find ourselves in a global confrontation, a third world war. This would be more than horrific for obvious reasons.

Obama is no lover of Israel and based on his record, I would have to conclude that he intends for Israel's destruction.

In 2010, when Turkey issued a resolution in the UN Security Council to condemn Israel and then demand an investigation of the Gaza flotilla raid, Obama refused to veto it, saying and doing nothing.

When the President of the PLO, Mahmoud Abbas, held a celebration in February of 2011 honoring the terrorist Dalal Mughrabi for murdering 37 Israeli's, the Obama administration said nothing. There was neither protest nor criticism.

When in September of 2011, PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas delivered a fiery anti-Israel speech to the UN, denying that Jews have any historic connection to Israel and when he delivered that speech on PLO letterhead showing a map of Palestine with Israel erased, there was no criticism from Obama.

By diplomatically and politically isolating Israel, by relating to Israel in a way that encourages Israel's enemies, Obama is putting the seal to Israel's destruction and perhaps ours as well since such is a very real threat to world peace.

In a movie version about the Manhattan Project, FDR uncertain what course to take asked to speak with Eleanor for a moment. He asked, "If Hitler had a bomb powerful enough to destroy all of London, what would he do." Without a moment's hesitation came the answer, "He'd use it."

This may well have been mere dramatization -- but most certainly the sentiment was real. And in the present political climate, with the heat rising from Radical Islam per the Muslim Brotherhood, the situation is more real.

[Per Egypt, one might ask -- would they kill an entire nation of many million if angry at a few independent citizens? Think what attacking an embassy and burning a flag represent, and the recent intelligence services warnings about attacks (presumably random) that might happen in the U.S.]

If we are lucky, Iran would only use the treat of nuclear weapons to shield it from the US and the rest of the world to take aggressive actions with its army. But like with Egypt, it may not take much to light the fuse of a very big fire cracker. This is not a fourth of July that America would want to see.

I was till recently, unemployed myself for 2 1/2 years. With all due respect to all the fraction of struggling former middle class bread winners that Mr. Obama has put back to part time minimum wage work at McDonald's, I was hoping that his foreign policy might have been better than his economic saavy. But its not being so is more frightening, because in a world with a nuclear Iran, things in all ways -- including economically -- could be so much worse.

We need a world in which we all take mutual responsibility for each other -- it is our only chance out of the present morass of Humanity. But in the world of a nuclear Iran and growing Middle Eastern radicalism that Mr. Obama is leading us to, we'll have lost it. Read more

Her debate with Sir James Goldsmith on Charlie Rose which can be seen in entirety here http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5064665078176641728&hl=en# is all you ever need to know on the amazing benefits of global outsourcing and the wonderful brave new world we now find ourselves in now. If Sir James Goldsmith were alive to today to see his bold and sad predictions manifest to where we are at now. All you need to is watch and see the stark difference between a seasoned, vastly experienced business professional give stark predictions of our brave new world and an ivory tower Keynesian who is completely out of her league in he Socratic school of Debate. Read more

As one of the proponents of NAFTA who garnered the most attention I fail to see how anyone would take Tyson's commentary of job creation with any creedence. She was part of the cabal of economists who, during the Clinton years, opened the chicken coop to the nocturnals of Wall Street. Two decades of Globalization later, look around you. Worked out well for Mexicans and their clients like VW, though. Oh, and Canada too. Thanks Laura. Glad I don't share your citizenship. Read more

One of the first initiatives by the Obama administration to create jobs AND promote a green policy was to buy functioning old cars and make them not functional. Every "poor" person I met was extremely distraught because the price of a car they could afford -- a used car -- doubled. That did not create jobs; it bankrolled dealers and salespeople.Next, the Solyndra bankruptcy. There was also another solar failure and, instead, of hiring American companies, Obama outsourced to Spain.No thanks on the job creation.No thanks to more police. It's the poor who end up in jail. California is going bankrupt because the cost per inmate is approximately 55K. The US has more people in prison by percentage than any other country in the world.No thanks to more teachers. They have turned into nannies rather than educators.No thanks to socialized healthcare. Deregulate. Push people to take better care of their own health. Absolutely, no thanks to more government. Cut it in half, please, as soon as possible.Read more

The real problem is failed economic policies foisted upon middle America by failed economists. The Age of the Economists turned middle America into a post-industrialist shell that is just now recovering from the carpet-bombing of off-shored industrialism led by the domestic forces of Globalization. Read more

Robert Skidelsky
on why the right economic policies cannot work without the right public expectations.

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